Julietta wants a beer: How a tourist was left high and dry in India

First Hand, a collection of non-fiction graphic narratives published by Yoda Press and co-edited by Vidyun Sabhaney and well-known artist Orijit Sen, combines image and word to tell stories of real people and extraordinary lives.

Though comic books have been an integral part of Indian imagination, thanks to Amar Chitra Katha, Chacha Chaudhry, Nagraj and other names, they were usually regarded as children's fare, with minimum or no content for adult engagement. That idea has been blown to bits with the emergence of political graphic fiction and non-fiction such as Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, Maus by Art Spieigelman, Palestine by Joe Sacco, and several other highly intelligent takes on the world around.

While India has seen graphic fiction by the likes of Sarnath Banerjee, Naseer Ahmed and Saurabh Singh, Saurav Mohapatra and Vivek Shinde, First Hand is really the first of its kind to bring about non-fiction and journalistic narratives through the novel medium of graphic art and illustration.The juxtaposition of texts and images, with haunting minimalism of words and the atmospherics rendered in black and white silhouettes, tell a familiar story in a brand new way.

Says Vidyun Sabhaney, "Comics gives its creators tremendous political agency to counter an establishment view. It allows readers and writers to re-enter their world through the rupture of a new visual lens, giving both an opportunity to break from the dominant narratives of the times."

In this excerpt (see below) from "Why Julietta didn't get her drink", Isa Hinojosa and Rahul Srivastava trail a "phirang" in her search for some beer in Prohibition-afflicted Indian states. As only five-star hotels are now allowed to serve imported, foreign made alcohol, the class divide is more obvious than ever.

How does that affect a backpacker on a shoestring budget travelling the length and breadth of India to soak in the sweat and the sun? Rather adversely, as this graphic non-fiction finds out. Will India's Prohibition mania dent its tourism industry and can alientating a whole bunch of middle and working class travellers from abroad ever work for our "culture"

Here's what the editors of First Hand have to say on the novel publishing venture: "Writers, artists, reporters, activists, researchers, designers, anthropologists, academicians, and film-makers lend their experience, knowledge and craft to bring alive in illustration stories that too often get reduced to numbers and statistics. The book gives us many different points of view through which we can look at reality, unfiltered and unfettered by the politics of mass media and governance."  

You can make donations to crowd-fund compensations for the contributors to First Hand. It will be worth it.